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Doug Sulpy & Steve Shorten wrote:Have you heard the news today?

Oh, boy!

Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Thanks to the generosity of a collector-who-shall-remain-unnamed, we received four tracks at 910 International Headquarters today (and our satellite office, a.k.a., Steve’s house). Okay. Quick. What comes into your mind when you think “holy grail”? If you’re the religious type, the answer will be “holy grail.”* If not, the answer will either be “Indiana Jones” or “Sgt. Pepper multi-tracks.”

Right! We got some “Indiana Jones” outtakes!

No, seriously. Multi-tracks of “Pepper,” “With a Little Help,” “She’s Leaving Home” and “A Day In The Life” have surfaced. These appear to be raw dubs from the 4-track multi-tracks, and do not feature the fades and final edits heard on the final versions. Oddly, this is a set of four WAV files each containing all four songs. They can be stacked in a multitrack editor and all four recordings sync together perfectly. Yes... remixing your own is easily done... and the possibility of true surround mixing now exists.

Let’s take ‘em one at a time, and see what we hear (so to speak)…

Track 1:
Pepper. Applause track. Lots of it. Lots of edits.

WALHFMF – Surprising, no applause (the Hollywood Bowl screaming overdub is not here, but that's on Secret Songs in Pepperland anyway!), but a nice iso of Ringo’s snare and tympani, followed by the bass guitar / tambourine / guitar track.

She’s Leaving Home – String track. A few extra notes here and there along the timeline (across all four tracks) where edits were later made to remove an unwanted bit of Hewson's score.

A Day In The Life – Piano intro. John’s lead vocal. Count-in (with reverb). Paul’s vocal (complete with count-in, which I’ve never noticed before). John’s reverberated vocal, with lots of other wailing from Paul and George which I’ve never heard before, or which has always been buried in the mix of the released record. Punch in back to the isolated lead vocal. No final chord, on this or any of the other three tracks.

Track 2:
Pepper. Bass note. Engineer: “nine” … Paul’s count-in! This is the backing track, similar to the bootlegged acetate, but even longer at the end, as it goes into a bit of reverb.

WALHFMF – Backing track. Interesting to hear without the “Billy Shears!” backing vocals, or Ringo’s lead. At the very end you can hear George Martin say: “stay there” for some reason.

She’s Leaving Home – String backing track #2.

A Day In The Life – Guitar backing, with tambourine.

Track 3:
Pepper. Engineer says: “running.” Isolated lead vocals.

WALHFMF – Isolated “Billy Shears” (well, with organ accompaniment, really). Isolated lead vocal from Ringo (with backing vocals, except on the final note).

She’s Leaving Home – Isolated lead vocal, including John’s backing vocal.

A Day In The Life – Woah! Harpsichord playing on the intro?! Otherwise, this is the strings channel.

Track 4:
Pepper. Guitar. Horns (including a bunch of bum notes at the end which we’ve never heard).

WALHFMF – Harmonies for “Billy Shears.” Backing vocals, and guitar.

She’s Leaving Home – Harmony vocal from Paul on last line of 1st verse, John and Paul’s backing vocals isolated.

A Day In The Life – Bass guitar and drums only!

Audio fidelity on the tracks is very very good, but not what one would expect from a direct-to-digital lossless copy of the multitracks. Frankly, the sound quality suggests nothing so much as the possibility that this may have come from a multichannel dub recorded in the early 1970s during the aborted quad Pepper project. The fact that the thing loops at the end and starts over again before the WAVs cut off almost suggest that the recording was done on a four-track cartridge, but we have no evidence to support this other than circumstantial. Of course, we could just be blowing smoke out of our collective rear ends here, and this *could* have leaked from a more recent remix project (DVD-Audio? Anthology 5.1?) but the suggestion that this is something much older feels right. Nonetheless, as we said above, the fidelity is quite good and a little clean-up will undoubtedly produce excellent results.

Amazingly enough, the Beatles community-at-large seems not to have this stuff yet or know of its existence in the wild. The leak, we're told, came from a Genesis collector who doesn't seem to have appreciated the significance of the find... and that's about all we know for sure.

Xenu wrote:There're some radio rips around right now, but obviously those aren't quite ideal.

Xenu wrote:Nifty.

I can't wait for the real thing to hit the internet.

(nor can I wait for the new Radiohead)